The interview began with a discussion of the artwork in the
Vatican. Ex-priest Tony Adams, but the
gist is that “if you go into the Sistine Chapel, you’re in the presence of
something done by a gay man that could be described in many camps as high-end
pornography.”

He added to this, “In the Vatican museum, you can’t take
five steps in any direction without tripping over a penis or an exposed breast
or a fleshy thigh.” Has this guy ever heard of Renaissance art? Man in his
natural state? But the Sistine Chapel is definitely just a statement about gay
sex, no doubt about it.

Then, the conversation unsurprisingly gravitated toward the
causes of this expression of “unfulfilled sexuality.” Lesbian activist and “public
theologian” Irene Monroe claimed that “religious, erotic, homoerotic art
originated in the Vatican, because you have a cloistered environment of gay men
who do not have to conform to the conforms of not only masculinity … compulsory
heterosexuality.”

“A cloistered environment of gay men” … they’re presumably
talking about men who have taken life-long vows of chastity, like the
cardinals, the bishops, and the Pope, whose sexuality Monroe addressed
specifically.

“He’s not gay-friendly, if anything, um, I would go so far,
Tony, as to say that he too might be closeted as so many of the others have
been.”

So this is the logic: if you’re not popping champagne and
tossing glitter over homosexuality, you must be a closeted gay person, like the
Pope and all the cardinals, bishops, and priests in the Catholic Church.
Totally makes sense.

Cue commentary on the Church’s “hypocrisy.”

Adams explained, “It’s a religion built on denial and
repression and desire and claims unfulfilled sexuality.”

Yahoo editor Jo Piazza jumped to call the Church an “organization
that is incredibly conservative, incredibly backwards.” Monroe noted the
Church’s “recalcitrant [stance] on abortion.”

Interviewer Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani added, “You have
those, very, sort of Catholic Church purists, traditionalists, who are, on the
one hand, sort of pushing you to be upholding the conservative values that they
feel comfortable with, and they’re sort of stuck in the past.”

Got it. Conservative values are recalcitrant, stuck in the
past, and incredibly backward. Which really is a compliment coming from this
crowd.